Incumbent Republican Senator Marco Rubio openly considered whether to seek re-election or run for President in 2016.[2][3][4] He stated in April 2014 that he would not run for both the Senate and President in 2016, as Florida law prohibits a candidate from appearing twice on a ballot, but did not rule out running for either office.[5] In April 2015, he announced that he was running for President[6] and would not seek re-election.[7][8][9] Rubio has said he will not run for re-election to the Senate even if he drops out of the GOP presidential primary (which he did after it took place in Florida on March 15, 2016) before he would have to qualify for the 2016 Senate primary ballot, for which the filing deadline is June 24, 2016.[10]

Results

Libertarian Party

On October 1, 2015, Adrian Wyllie and Lynn House, Chair and Vice Chair respectively of the Libertarian Party of Florida, resigned their seats in protest after the executive committee refused to oust candidate Augustus Invictus from the party. According to Wyllie, Invictus had defended eugenics, called for a new Civil War, and brutally slaughtered a goat, and is not representative of the Libertarian Party. Invictus has refuted these claims, calling Wyllie's accusations, "deliberate misrepresentation[s]."[149]